Wire bonding is well-known in the art and used widely to interconnect chips with chip carriers. Traditionally, a gold wire is bonded to an aluminum pad. There are several limitations of this method. The intermetallics formed between gold and aluminum may reduce the reliability of the bond. Additionally, the robustness of the bonding process is compromised by bonding dissimilar metals. In advanced CMOS technology, copper metallization and low-k dielectrics, e.g. FSG (fluorinated silica glass), SiLK (a polyarelene ether by Dow Chemical), are used and, for even more advanced applications, porous, very weak materials are employed. This stage is sometimes referred to as the Back End of the Line (BEOL). The BEOL circuit structure is low modulus and sensitive to damage by pressure. The top aluminum surface, normally covered by a layer of oxide, must be removed in order to form a good contact between the test probe and the pad metal. This probe movement is called “scrubbing” or “plowing”. Therefore, the chip is subjected to potential mechanical damage. It is highly desirable to establish an I/O pad that does not require scrubbing to provide low contact resistance with test probes. Currently, because of the need to “plow” into top aluminum, the pad size has to be quite large. This limits the chip design for higher I/O counts or results in an increased chip size. The pad size is often double the size needed for bonding, since the probing area can become so damaged that it cannot be used for bonding.